Beer Bottle Temple in Thailand
Liaison Sharon Saw, sent me the photos below of a temple made out of beer bottles! It’s located about 400 miles North-East of Bangkok (Thailand) in the city of Khun Han. It’s very close to the Cambodian border.
This temple is called “Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew Temple” and the monks in this temple spent about 25 years building it out of 1.5 million beer bottles. Their initial idea was to clean up the beer bottle pollution…but through this environmentally friendly way of utilizing discarded bottles it turned out to be quite a piece of unique architecture! They started this building project in 1984, and it is (still) now the only temple in the world made out of beer bottles.
Tsem Rinpoche
(Photos extracted from Tree Hugger: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/temple-built-from-beer-bottles.php and Green Upgrader: http://greenupgrader.com/4262/one-million-beer-bottles-later-and-its-a-buddhist-temple/2/)
Hi Rinpoche, hello again. Thanks for the posting on the beer bottle temple and thanks to Sharon for such a wonderful sharing.
It’s really inspiring to see such a great use of unlimitless gift of god to human…the imagination. Imagination combined with strong faith,determination and pure altruistic intention bring many possibilities and limitless benefit to all sentinent beings.
Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew Temple was built with accumulations of 1.5 million beer bottles collected in 25 years. This temple was built by Thai monks. Thsiland is a country were there are lots of tourists. There is no problems in getting beer bottles to build the temple. Definitely it will go into the Guiness Book of Records as this is the only one in the world. The Thais are really very creative people. To try to have a clean environment and get rid of unwanted beer bottles the monks have built a temple by recycling beer bottles. I hope the Thais will come up with more creative recycling projects for the benefit of their country.
I’ll bet this temple is very cooling.
Thanks Rinpoche for sharing this beautiful pictures that Sharon sent you. I now recalled that I have visited this place before. It is awesome and definately a master piece.
I think over my lifetime thus far I could have built at least one chunk of that wall. I almost totally quit drinking. It was affecting my whole life just too much. I have 1 beer 2x a week maybe now, I still need a little island of Samsara now and then, where I can just forget about my troubles. I’m working on the great purge of all bad habits but it’s a long term goal for me. It will not happen overnight.
In other news: I always thought if you could get me to stop eating meat, you could literally get anybody to do it. I am a vegetarian completely now. Bye-bye cheeseburger, pepperoni pizza, we had some fun times… Now I have higher goals, and I’m not sad you’re gone.
-Josh Akers
Reading this post reminded me of Rinpoche teaches us on a little action we do each day with Dharma motivation could lead to big spiritual gain in the future. A little discard beer might look insignificant but combination of millions of it with effort, patient and right motivation, it could become a masterpiece like one shows in the picture!
I’m constantly being habitually caught up with the past and worried about the future and fail to see the potential of the little beer bottle in my daily life!
Thanks Rinpoche for reminding again.
What a good way to recycle unwanted products. After 25 years of perseverance and hard work with the use of 1.5million beer bottles that were discarded, these monks have created a masterpiece!
Awesome! Who would have thought? Instead of Junk its ART + FUNCTION with REVERENCE!
Instead of ignoring the problem, the monks took ownership and set out, go about with enthusiastic effort, dedication and loads of patience, love to create this magnificent structure!
So very creative, highly imaginative and beautifully constructed. I am sure the reflection from the bottles create a symphony of sorts when the sun shines on them!
Dearest Rinpoche,
Thank you for posting on the beer bottle temple. Thank you Mama for providing the pictures. The pictures are just lovely.
I think it is quite amazing that they made something good out of something that once contained intoxicants. I think that the beer bottle temple is the same as a human sometimes.
We are sometimes just vessels for negative thoughts to arise. Even so, we can still be better people if we want to. If we want to, we will.
Dearest Rinpoche,
Thank you for posting on the beer bottle temple. Thank you Mama for providing the pictures. The pictures are just lovely.
This is exactly same like the art that people make through rubbish that end up as masterpieces.
I think it is quite amazing that they made something good out of something that once contained intoxicants. I think that the beer bottle temple is the same as a human sometimes.
We are sometimes just vessels for negative thoughts to arise. Even so, we can still be better people if we want to. If we want to, we will.
I really wish I could go there once.
Fantastic, a temple made out of beer bottles, located in the city of Khun Han, 400miles north-east of Bangkok close to the Cambodhian border. Such marvelous creation of unique architecture which should rightfully be reserved and saved into the Book of World record. With 25 years of of patience and perserverence, primarily helping out to clean up the pollution of beer bottles, it turns out to be a display of good faith, devotion,effort, determination, and loving-kindness to put the 1.5 million of duly purified beer bottles to good use to provide shelter for the Three Jewels. My heartiest congratulations to all the devout monks and hardworking members of “WAT PA MAHA CHEDI KAEW TEMPLE”.
Thanks for the great details! Looking forward to hearing more stuff about this!
Thank you for sharing about the beer bottle temple.. Its very beautiful… and the person for having such a great idea. Hopefully i can visit the temple later in life. Indeed a very great idea to safe the planet. Nice…
Everything is so well thought of. Other than being eco-friendly, it’s even architecturally Thai. Conceptually and aesthetically I think it’s brilliant. I can imagine it’s more beautiful than in the pictures because of the glass texture. It’s definitely the sincere motivation of the monks wanting to help better the environment for the benefit of the Thais. Such care they have shown.
Thank you for sharing the beer bottle temple. Its amazing to see how creative of human to build this temple and i believe it full with the faith, patience and effort to make this happen.
The temple look beautiful, serene and it save the world by recycling of beer bottle. what a wonderful thought of it.
THIS IS AWESOME!!
1. It is good for the environment – helps Thailand with their clean-up efforts, so that they don’t have a gazillion empty bottles littering the streets.
2. It serves as a good reminder to the sangha and other Dharma practitioners about attachments that continue to keep us in samsara.
I think that this is such a great idea, for both the country, the temple and the practitioners.
I hope that the bottles were treated before being used. Am a bit weary about how long-lasting and hardy glass bottles are!
The Thai’s are incredibility creative. I remember reading another one of Rinpoche’s blog post about the innovative floatation devices that they came up with during the flood.
http://blog.tsemtulku.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/funnies/how-to-survive-a-flood.html
Some are hilarious but we all have to admire their ingenuity! lol x